A single purpose runs throughout this little book, though different
aspects of it are treated in the three several parts. The first part,
"The Mystery of Evil," written soon after "The Idea of God," was
designed to supply some considerations which for the sake of conciseness
had been omitted from that book. Its close kinship with the second part,
"The Cosmic Roots of Love and Self-Sacrifice," will be at once apparent
to the reader.
That second part is, with a few slight changes, the Phi Beta Kappa
oration delivered by me at Harvard University, in June, 1895. Its
original title was "Ethics in the Cosmic Process," and its form of
statement was partly determined by the fact that it was intended as a
reply to Huxley's famous Romanes lecture delivered at the University of
Oxford in 1893. Readers of "The Destiny of Man" will observe that I have
here repeated a portion of the argument of that book. The detection of
the part played by the lengthening of infancy in the genesis of the
human race is my own especial contribution to the Doctrine of Evolution,
so that I naturally feel somewhat uncertain as to how far that subject
is generally understood, and how far a brief allusion to it will
suffice. It therefore seemed best to recapitulate the argument while
indicating its bearing upon the ethics of the Cosmic Process.
I can never cease to regret that Huxley should have passed away without
seeing my argument and giving me the benefit of his comments. The
subject is one of a kind which we loved to discuss on quiet Sunday
evenings at his fireside in London, many years ago. I have observed on
Huxley's part, not only in the Romanes lecture, but also in the charming
"Prolegomena," written in 1894, a tendency to use the phrase "cosmic
process" in a restricted sense as equivalent to "natural selection;" and
doubtless if due allowance were made for that circumstance, the
appearance of antagonism between us would be greatly diminished. In our
many talks, however, I always felt that, along with abundant general
sympathy, there was a discernible difference in mental attitude. Upon
the proposition that "the foundation of morality is to ... give up
pretending to believe that for which there is no evidence," we were
heartily agreed. But I often found myself more strongly inclined than my
dear friend to ask the Tennysonian question:--
"Who forged that other influence,
That heat of inward evidence,
By which he doubts against the sense?"
In the third part of the present little book, "The Everlasting Reality
of Religion," my aim is to show that "that other influence," that inward
conviction, the craving for a final cause, the theistic assumption, is
itself one of the master facts of the universe, and as much entitled to
respect as any fact in physical nature can possibly be. The argument
flashed upon me about ten years ago, while reading Herbert Spencer's
controversy with Frederic Harrison concerning the nature and reality of
religion. Because Spencer derived historically the greater part of the
modern belief in an Unseen World from the savage's primeval world of
dreams and ghosts, some of his critics maintained that logical
consistency required him to dismiss the modern belief as utterly false;
otherwise he would be guilty of seeking to evolve truth from false-hood.
By no means, replied Spencer: "Contrariwise, the ultimate form of the
religious consciousness is the final development of a consciousness
which at the outset contained a germ of truth obscured by multitudinous
errors." This suggestion has borne fruit in the third part of the
present volume, where I have introduced a wholly new line of argument to
show that the Doctrine of Evolution, properly understood, does not
leave the scales equally balanced between Materialism and Theism, but
irredeemably discredits the former, while it places the latter upon a
firmer foundation than it has ever before occupied.
My reference to the French materialism of the eighteenth century, in its
contrast with the theism of Voltaire, is intended to point the stronger
contrast between the feeble survivals of that materialism in our time
and the unshakable theism which is in harmony with the Doctrine of
Evolution. When some naturalist like Haeckel assures us that as
evolutionists we are bound to believe that death ends all, it is a great
mistake to hold the Doctrine of Evolution responsible for such a
statement. Haeckel's opinion was never reached through a scientific
study of evolution; it is nothing but an echo from the French
speculation of the eighteenth century. Such a writer as La Mettrie
proceeded upon the assumption that no belief concerning anything in the
heavens above, or the earth beneath, or the waters under the earth, is
worthy of serious consideration unless it can be demonstrated by the
methods employed in physical science. Such a mental attitude was natural
enough at a time when the mediŠval theory of the world was falling into
discredit, while astronomy and physics were winning brilliant victories
through the use of new methods. It was an attitude likely to endure so
long as the old-fashioned fragmentary and piecemeal habits of studying
nature were persisted in; and the change did not come until the latter
half of the nineteenth century.
The encyclopŠdic attainments of Alexander von Humboldt, for example,
left him, to all intents and purposes, a materialist of the eighteenth
century. But shortly before the death of that great German scholar,
there appeared the English book which heralded a complete reversal of
the attitude of science. The "Principles of Psychology," published in
1855 by Herbert Spencer, was the first application of the theory of
evolution on a grand scale. Taken in connection with the discoveries of
natural selection, of spectrum analysis, and of the mechanical
equivalence between molar and molecular motions, it led the way to that
sublime conception of the Unity of Nature by which the minds of
scientific thinkers are now coming to be dominated. The attitude of mind
which expressed itself in a great encyclopŠdic book without any
pervading principle of unity, like Humboldt's "Kosmos," is now become
what the Germans call _ein ueberwundener Standpunkt_, or something that
we have passed by and left behind.
When we have once thoroughly grasped the monotheistic conception of the
universe as an organic whole, animated by the omnipresent spirit of God,
we have forever taken leave of that materialism to which the universe
was merely an endless multitude of phenomena. We begin to catch glimpses
of the meaning and dramatic purpose of things; at all events we rest
assured that there really is such a meaning. Though the history of our
lives, and of all life upon our planet, as written down by the
unswerving finger of Nature, may exhibit all events and their final
purpose in unmistakable sequence, yet to our limited vision the several
fragments of the record, like the leaves of the CumŠan sibyl, caught by
the fitful breezes of circumstance and whirled wantonly hither and
thither, lie in such intricate confusion that no ingenuity can enable us
wholly to decipher the legend. But could we attain to a knowledge
commensurate with the reality--could we penetrate the hidden depths
where, according to Dante (_Paradiso_, xxxiii. 85), the story of Nature,
no longer scattered in truant leaves, is bound with divine love in a
mystic volume, we should find therein no traces of hazard or
incongruity. From man's origin we gather hints of his destiny, and the
study of evolution leads our thoughts through Nature to God.
CAMBRIDGE, March 2, 1899.
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